NEW DELHI: Residents in the Muslim-majority archipelago of Lakshadweep off the coast of Kerala have slammed the Indian government's renewed push to ban meat meals from local schools, which follows a slew of controversial regulations introduced by the region's Hindu administrator.
Lakshadweep islands lie in the Arabian Sea, about 200 miles off the south-western coast of Kerala state. While some 96 percent of its 70,000 people are Muslim, since December it has been governed by Praful Khoda Patel, a politician from the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Patel's other regulations, which locals see as targeting their culture, include a proposed cow slaughter ban and changes in land development rules that would allow the government to take over any land for infrastructure projects. A preventive detention law, in the region with one of the lowest crime rates in the country, was introduced by Patel in January.
While the meat meal ban was stayed by the Kerala High Court on June 22, the court gave the government two weeks to file its counter-affidavit. On Monday, Patel's administration justified the move by saying that islanders needed to eat more fruits.
"We will go up to the Supreme Court to defend the identity of the islands. We will fight with all our strength to save it," Dr. P. Koya former provincial commissioner and a leader of the ongoing Save Lakshadweep Campaign against Patel's administrative reforms, told Arab News on Wednesday.
"Children have been given high protein non-vegetarian food for years, which comes under the budget. Then why ban them?" Dr. Koya said. "Why were no local stakeholders taken into confidence? This is a disrespect to democracy."
The local government justified the meat meal ban by saying in the counter-affidavit it was seeking to close the region's remaining dairy farms because they were "suffering losses and catered to only a few people."
While local officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment, former member of the Minicoy Island administration Save Lakshadweep Campaign, activist Hassan Bodumukka, said as the farms were a government enterprise: "they are meant to serve people not to earn a profit."
“Tell me which government enterprise is running on profit, be it railways or airlines or any other ventures," he told Arab News. "Since it’s a Muslim majority area and we all know the anti-minority agenda of the BJP. They just want to consolidate majoritarian politics at the cost of the people of the island."
For experts, forcing Lakshadweep to embrace meat-free diets would amount to an attack on their identity.
“Lakshadweep residents are 100 per cent meat-eaters," K.A. Shaji, a political analyst in Kerala, said. "Their eating habits have evolved over generations. It is a cultural attack."
